Huge trees, Beautiful flowers, and Heat!

Hello all!

Long time, no see!  I have been in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park for the last few days, and I have to say that it was the best park we have been to so far.  This is in part because we got to enjoy it without any rain, and partly because the park is set up very well!

The park has only two main roads, and one goes through the entire park.  This road also ends in the park.  So, we went to the end of the road, and we saw the attractions in the park from that end down- partly because we didn't want to drive up that windy road more than we had to already!

The road was the worst part about the park, and it will destroy brakes if you don't use lower gears- and we saw a LOT of people using their brakes all the way down the canyon!

The first day we were in Kings Canyon NP, we stayed in a campground called Canyon View, and in the morning, we went to hike a trail called Yucca Point.  This trail was THE HARDEST I have ever hiked, including the one up to Table Rock in SC!!  I think it was a combination of the heat, the steepness of the canyon, and the elevation.  The elevation has been kicking our butts for the whole trip, and it seems like we will never get used to it, but then again, we also stay in the parks only a short while and don't get a chance to adjust.   Needless to say, at the end of the day, we were soooo tired, and we collapsed into our tents.

That night we went to a campground called Sunset, and it had an EXCELLENT sunset!  My pictures made it to the picture gallery in my facebook and picasa albums. Links to come at the end of the post!

We were on the move again the next day, going to the General Grant Tree and some other HUGE trees!!  It was really nice to be among the giants, but I have to say that they look fake.  I mean, something that huge is so hard to imagine, and then you see it before you in an amazing forest setting.  You would come around a bend, and this massive tree would just appear like it had materialized from nothing, but it had been there all along.

Anywhos, (shout out to Grandma Musco!! Love you Lisa, stay Golden!), we went to another campground, and, unfortunately, it was all full- so we had to do everything we had planned to do over the next two days in one.  It was good that all of the attractions of park are very close to one another, and that they are easily accessible by foot!

We saw all the Giants, including General Sherman- The Largest Tree in the World (by mass)- and the Senate, the House, and the President.  We also saw Pine Martens, many different kinds of birds, Marmots, and even a BEAR!  We actually stumbled upon the bear while not really caring about the trail we were on.

We saw some people stopped dead in the path, and we were walking by them until they stopped us.  They looked at us and said, "Look!"  I was like, "OH HOLY CRAP! A bear right there, not 100 ft. from me!"  You can see him in the pics to come!

From there we moved to the foothills- it was the most desert-like area I had ever been in!  So dry, but it had lots of live oaks and sooo many wildflowers! Those are also in the photos- and I am very sorry for those of you who have to endure the gratuitous plant and flower photos, but remember this is my blog.......so...yeah.....All the plant nerds following this get it!

The campground we stayed at was called Potwisha- no kidding that is the name, and you said it correctly- it was a Moro Indian name, those were the people who inhabited the area until we came along and killed them......

So, we really didn't do much down in the foothills- we were too hot, and way way too tired to move by the second day we were there! Something hit us yesterday, and we became so tired that the we could hardly hold our heads up!  So, we spent the whole sleeping- or sweating to death in our tents.


All in all, it was my favorite park so far, and I can't wait for Yosemite!

Here is the link to the Picasa public album:  HERE

All of you that have Facebook, go to my photos and look for the Sequoia album- I am tired of linked to that....sorry!

See you all sometime after we get out of Yosemite!

EBS